Читать книгу The Women's Club - Abusive partners are winding up dead… Criminals who target women are the victims of nasty accidents… Pretend it's not happening, you might live longer - Michael Crawley - Страница 8

When Jack put his hand out to help Celia into the taxi, she shook it off.

He followed her in. ‘What was that all about?’ he asked.

‘Men don’t do that any more, Dad. Welcome to the twenty-first century.’

‘Surely some men still do. I know your mother liked the little attentions.’

‘I’m not my mom, Dad. Her type, they’re dinosaurs. Every time a man holds a door or pulls back a chair for a woman, he’s insulting our entire sex. We aren’t helpless little ninnies, you know.’

‘Of course you aren’t. It wasn’t about disrespect – the opposite, in fact.’

‘Let’s change the subject.’

They rode in silence, though inwardly Jack was groaning. It would be a lot easier to work hard at getting his baby back if he could at least like the woman she’d become. But she was so brittle. She was all points and prickles, like a bundle of sticks tied tightly in the middle by a tasteful little designer belt. He stared out of the window.

‘Crap,’ said Celia. ‘It’s no good. Now I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth. Do you have any of those little mints you always carry?’

‘As always.’ He passed her the flat plastic container.

Celia shook a mint into her mouth and dropped the pack into her handbag. ‘I like your tie.’

Jack smiled in relief. This was more like it. She was actually being nice.

‘Is it new, in my honour?’

Jack glanced down at his silk Sulka tie. ‘I got it from that new department store – Khan’s. They have some nice stuff. I should take you there on a shopping spree one day.’

‘That’d be nice. I haven’t been. It’s on the corner of Gentry and Maple streets, right?

‘Right. Oh – here we are.’

Molino’s was much bigger than Jack had anticipated – a cathedral of a place. In the reception area there was a vending machine that offered, among other things, his brand of breath mints, Certs. He thought of getting himself a fresh pack but Celia might take that as an unsubtle reminder that she hadn’t returned the one he’d given her. With Celia – well – it was best to tread softly. And she’d complimented his tie! The way his heart soared at the thought almost made him laugh. It was ridiculous to let a kid get to you like this, as though Celia’s surviving parent was, emotionally, an empty-nest mom and not the man of the house. But he was getting used to his new state of mind, and there was enough of the old Jack left to bluff him through to success. He was sure of it.

An incredibly elegant young woman in a floor-brushing green gown led them to the table that was reserved in the name of Celia Hale. Celia didn’t object when the hostess had a waitress pull her chair back for her. Jack wondered about the protocol of that but mentally shrugged it off. He’d never understand the new rules. Even the waiting-staff being all female made him feel slightly uncomfortable. There’s a camaraderie between a man and his waiter, a sort of epicurean bonding, that’d never be the same with a waitress.

Did they still call them waitresses?

Celia said, ‘I’ll be right back.’

Jack twisted to watch her go. She wouldn’t duck out on him, would she? Celia paused to speak to a waitress. Something changed hands. Was his daughter tipping in advance, to assure them of special service? He’d done that, on occasion, when the client had been important and he hadn’t been known at the restaurant. Anyway, that explained why Celia had left the table.

Jack turned back. The oversized menu had an entire page devoted to steaks. By the time Jack had decided on the porterhouse Kobe, and he wasn’t even going to consider if it’d be a politically correct choice, Celia was back. She took over the ordering. The waitress seemed to expect that. She virtually ignored Jack’s attempts to interject.

Whatever the food was going to be like, the place deserved a visit, just for a look at both the staff and the female patrons. The waitresses were uniformly lovely, in an understated way. He couldn’t say quite the same about the diners – not the understated part. The girl across the aisle, for example, was wearing far too much make-up and, Jack was sure, a wig. Her companion, a florid man in his fifties, didn’t seem to mind. His eyes rarely rose higher than his date’s embarrassingly deep cleavage. Could she be a call girl?

He’d no business pigeon-holing people like that. Life, he’d discovered recently, didn’t operate under the same rules as the boardroom. Most of his old hard-won business skills now did him more harm than good.

After all, anyone looking at Jack dining with Celia might think the same thing as he was thinking about the man at the other table.

Jack grinned to himself. If both dates were taken as call girls, his was by far the higher-class one. Wouldn’t she just hate to be mistaken for a whore, even a classy one.

‘What’s so funny?’ Celia asked.

‘Nothing.’ A flicker of light caught Jack’s eye. Over in the far corner a waitress was igniting a flambé drink. Stupid. Why burn off the alcohol and present a fire hazard?

The pretty girl at the next table stood up. The man said something but didn’t stand. She walked away in a too-short skirt with her hips swinging.

‘Dad!’

‘Sorry. I was just . .’

‘Ogling that girl’s legs.’

Jack shrugged. He was thinking of apologising for the venal sin of being male when he was distracted by yet another bewigged and overly made-up but tall and lovely woman, an older one this time, stalking up the aisle towards them. She was wearing a very becoming dark blue trouser suit.

There was a bright, flickering flare and a high-pitched scream from the far corner. Jack half stood. The top of the table where the flambé drink had been served was ablaze. Such idiocy! His attention was distracted by a movement to his side. His head turned. The tall woman was scooping a steak knife from the florid man’s table and ramming it upwards, up under his chin. An image – the serrated blade slicing through the base of the man’s tongue, piercing his soft palate and on up to impale his brain – clamped Jack in cold horror.

What would that feel like?

The man toppled face down onto his table, gurgling blood.

Jack snapped out of his shock.

By the time Jack got to the table the victim’s eyes had glazed and the bleeding was abating. Dead! That woman! Jack tore down the aisle and out into the spacious lobby just in time to see a door swing closed behind a blue-clad leg. He charged the door but it didn’t give. There was a sign: Staff only. No exit. He pushed and pulled but it was locked tight. How had the woman barged straight through a locked door? Jack glanced down. There on the floor, halfway under the edge of the door, was a flat piece of white plastic. He picked it up. It was from a pack of Certs. Identical to the mints he’d given to Celia.

He had a mental flash – a picture of a thin strip of hard plastic wedged between a lock’s striking plate and its tongue. No. That was ridiculous.

Even so, he slid the piece of plastic into his jacket pocket.

Back in the dining room, the fire was out. The patrons were milling about, some in shock, some in tears, some apparently furious at having their meals interrupted. The hostess and two of the waitresses were clustered around the corpse of the florid man.

Celia stood, stiff as dried sticks, by her chair. When Jack approached she threw herself against his chest. ‘That was awful!’

Jack wrapped his arms around her, careful not to add pressure to her bony frame as he did so. This was an unexpected bonus he was more than happy to receive. ‘There, there,’ he murmured gently, ever-so-gently, patting her sharp shoulder with his clumsy paw. ‘Daddy’s here.’

‘Is he – is he…?’ she sobbed into his lapel.

Jack turned his attention to the stabbing victim, his head in a pool of blood. The setting plate was almost full with it but as yet not a drop had stained the tablecloth. Amazing.

‘Yes. He’s dead. Did you see it happen?’

‘I can’t…’ Celia practically howled.

Jack risked a comforting squeeze. ‘I saw it, Celia. I chased the woman who did it but she got away.’

‘What?’ She withdrew her face from his now wet and mascara-smeared suit jacket and stared at him in shock. ‘You did?’

Jack nodded. He was absurdly proud of himself for being the first on the scene. In an emergency, it seemed, his reflexes were at least semi-functional still. ‘She went through a staff only door, but when I got to it, it was locked.’

Celia nodded, blinking. ‘I didn’t see anything – that table on fire…’

‘Right. The question is: was the fire a coincidence that the murderess took advantage of, or a diversion?’ He hugged her harder. ‘An inside job.’

‘Ouch.’ Celia wriggled out of his arms. Jack let her go. She’d turned to him for comfort and he’d provided it. Excellent. He watched as the hostess stepped up onto a chair. The devil in him noticed that she had fine-boned ankles. She should have good ankles – she was all of twenty-five years old, little more than a child to a man of his age. Perhaps Celia was right and he did need to start dating.

Surely he should be paying more attention to the dead man? He glanced in the direction of the corpse. Someone had covered the mutilated head with a large white napkin that dark blood was soaking through. Obviously, there was nothing more to be done for him. Jack turned his attention back to the hostess, his conscience assuaged.

She announced, ‘Everybody, valued patrons, please calm down. Could you all move back, away from this side of the room? I’ll have coffee brought in for everyone. The police have been called. It’ll be better, I’m sure, if no one leaves.’

Moving everybody to one side turned out to be a mistake. The first thing that the police did when they arrived was to ask everyone to go back to wherever they’d been when the murder had taken place. As Jack had figured, they weren’t too happy about the napkin over the head, either.

Photographers moved down the aisles, snapping each table and those who sat at it. Detectives took down names and addresses. Jack expected to be among the first to be interviewed but the team working his aisle started at the top end, four tables away. Until then, he was stuck sitting across from Celia, who was slumped disconsolately over her place setting, toying with a steak knife. She must have realised it was identical to the one the killer had used because she pushed it aside violently, as if it had suddenly turned into something disgusting.

‘I’ve never even seen a dead body before, Dad.’

‘You saw your mother…’

‘That’s hardly the same! In her coffin! At the funeral home! And that was bad enough!’

‘You mean to say you’ve never seen a body at the scene of a crime.’

‘Say it whatever way you want. It’s horrible.’

‘It is. It truly is.’ He thought about adding, ‘He’s in a better place now,’ but it seemed absurd, what with the corpse still being seated at its table.

When the police finally reached him, Jack blurted, ‘I saw it happen. I’m an eyewitness.’

That got him the attention that his proximity to the crime warranted. A large man in a brown tweed suit led him to a room off the main dining area. It was elegantly furnished with a small table, two chairs and an oversized Regency chaise longue. The walls were crimson plush. It had no windows. Jack felt instantly uncomfortable.

To ease his tension, he told the handsome woman who sat at one side of the table, ‘If these walls could only talk,’ and regretted the implications of his words immediately.

She saved him from his embarrassment with a warm smile and said, ‘If walls could talk, I’d be out of a job.’ She waved at the vacant seat.

Jack sank into it gratefully. Despite the circumstances, it was nice to be with a woman who was mature – in her mid-forties, he guessed. Despite the twenty-odd years still between them, he could look on a woman of her age as a woman and not feel guilty about it.

She extended a hand. ‘Detective Lieutenant Anne Smelding.’

He took it. Her skin was dry and warm. ‘Jack Hale. I saw the murder take place. I tried to catch her, but she was too quick for me.’

‘Wonderful! Who was it? Could I have the perp’s name and address, please?’

‘I don’t…’

She grinned. The lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth deepened pleasantly. ‘Sorry, I was teasing. If only it were that easy.’ She hit the button on a tiny recorder. Her nails were short and neatly trimmed, with clear polish. ‘You don’t mind?’

‘Not in the least.’

She told the machine the date and time and gave it her and Jack’s names. ‘Now, Mr Hale, just tell me what you saw, in as much detail as possible, please.’

‘I saw a tall woman in a blue trouser suit marching down the aisle towards where my daughter and I sat.’

‘Marching?’

‘She looked very purposeful.’

‘I imagine she would, considering her errand. Can you describe her for me?’

‘Tall and slim – good-looking, I think.’

‘You think?’

‘She was very heavily made up and she was wearing a ginger wig.’

‘I see. Could it have been a man in drag?’

Jack thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. I didn’t notice any sign of an Adam’s apple and she had long slender fingers.’

‘You noticed her hands?’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget them – holding that knife and stabbing upwards under that poor man’s chin. It’s rattled me.’

‘You’re doing great. So far, you’re the only person who admits to having seen anything at all, Mr Hale. It seems there was a distraction at the time.’

‘Yes, the fire at the corner table.’

‘How come it didn’t distract you?’

Jack shrugged. ‘A flambé gone wrong is no big deal.’

She gave him an amused glance. It encouraged him.

He looked at her meaningfully. ‘I guess I’m more interested in looking at pretty women than I am at fires.’

This time her grin spread right across her face. She had a generous mouth. Jack liked that. He liked her demeanour, too, and her colouring was attractive. Strawberries and cream complexion and brown, chestnut brown, hair swept up tidily into a bun from which only a few wisps had managed to escape. They curled behind her neat little ears, making her long neck look vulnerable.

‘Mr Hale?’ She gave him a cool look, no less appraising than the one he’d been caught giving her.

‘Sorry. You’re…’ he caught himself before he could blurt out, ‘beautiful’. Jack sat back in his chair and squared his shoulders. If he could just hold it together maybe it wasn’t too late to make a favourable impression on this Detective Lieutenant Anne Smelding. ‘You were saying?’

‘I suppose it’s good for us that you do prefer to look at women.’ She glanced down at her notes. ‘The victim, Ronald T. Blair, was he dining alone?’

‘No. And you do know that someone put that napkin over his head after the crime?’

She nodded. ‘They’d hardly have done it before. Tell me about his companion.’

‘She left the table just before the – er – incident.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘It’s strange, but although she was a much younger girl, she too was wearing too much make-up and a wig.’

‘Did you get the impression she might be a whore?’

‘That’s not a word I’d use.’

‘Sorry. Did you think she might have been being paid for her company, then?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘That’s likely why she didn’t come back to the table. Working girls like to avoid publicity, and us.’

‘She’s disappeared?’

‘So far.’

Jack frowned. ‘I can’t get over the coincidence of two women, both in heavy make-up and wigs.’

‘Perhaps Mr Blair had a kink for overdone make-up and wigs.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘If he liked his women that way, the older one might be a cast-off lover and the younger one her replacement.’

‘You really think so?’

‘At this point, I don’t think anything. So, Mr Hale, is there anything else?’

Jack reached into his pocket for the sliver of plastic and laid it on the table between them.

‘What’s that?’

‘It was on the floor, next to that door I tried to chase the woman through but couldn’t. It occurred to me that the door might have been gimmicked beforehand by this being put between the tongue and the plate. That way she could just barge through, but once it swung shut no one without a key could follow her.’

‘That’d mean that someone who was involved had a key, to open it in the first place.’

‘I suppose it does.’

Anne Smelding picked up the piece of plastic with a pair of tweezers and slid it into a glassine envelope. ‘Then perhaps there are partial fingerprints on it, other than yours, of course.’

‘Oh! I didn’t think. Sorry.’

She sighed. ‘People don’t, despite what they learn from television.’

‘Not only from television,’ he protested, even as he realised it was. She probably thought he was a goofball.

‘Don’t worry. Chances are it’s just trash. I don’t think it’s likely this was some sort of elaborate conspiracy, do you?’ She looked at him intently.

‘Conspiracy? Someone to fix the door – the young girl to bring him here – the older woman to commit the actual crime?’

‘Not forgetting someone to start the fire that distracted everyone in the room – except you.’

‘Put that way, it does sound sort of silly, doesn’t it?’

‘We’ll need your fingerprints, if you don’t object.’

‘Of course not.’

‘And would you be up for working with a sketch artist?’

‘You have one with you?’

‘No. It isn’t like the old days, Mr Hale. You’d have to come to the precinct and work with our computer artist.’

‘Of course.’

A plainclothes man entered and passed a note to Lieutenant Smelding.

She read it, nodded, and said, ‘You’re free to go, Mr Hale. So is your daughter. Come by tomorrow, please, any time.’ She handed him her card.

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Shame. I was just beginning to enjoy myself.’

‘You find murder fun?’

‘Of course not. It was the company I was enjoying.’

She looked up at him from under her lashes. ‘Mr Hale! Are you coming on to me?’

Jack summoned up all his courage. ‘And if I was?’

‘My cell number is on my card.’

‘Oh!’ Jack felt a hot flush crawl up his face. Damn. He left the room red-faced. It was so long since he’d flirted with a woman. Decades, probably. And her, a professional, a police officer, coming back at him like that… Was that the way it was, these days?

In the cab, Celia curled up against the door and gazed forlornly out the window. Jack was feeling perversely invigorated, which made him guiltily remember the murdered man, which sent him veering off in search of mental distraction, which meant Anne Smelding, thoughts of whom pumped him up. Anne Smelding. She was like a shot of adrenalin through his system.

It wasn’t until the cab was pulling up outside Celia’s building that Jack remembered a bit of research that still needed doing, unfortunately. He turned to Celia, hating himself for what he was about to say and why he was going to say it. ‘Sweetheart, could I have one of my mints? All that interrogation dried my mouth right up.’

‘Mints?’ She turned her gaze from the window to him. ‘What mints?’

‘I gave you a pack of mints? In a little white plastic container?’

‘Right.’ Celia started rooting through her purse. ‘I remember now.’ She abruptly stopped searching. ‘Sorry, Dad. I finished them and threw the pack away.’ She roused herself to address the cabby. ‘Right here is fine.’

That was odd. Each pack held fifty little mints. He’d been sure the one in his pocket had been at least half full when he’d given it to Celia.

‘I’ll take care of the cab,’ Jack said automatically.

‘Thanks, Dad. Sorry about dinner.’ Celia’s eyes brimmed with tears again.

‘Me too. I was looking forward to spending some time with you. It’s not late. In fact, if you liked we could still…’

‘Not now, Dad. I’m totally freaked. I’m going straight to bed. Rain check?’

‘Sure. If you need anything just call.’

‘I will.’

‘Promise?’

She nodded.

Jack waited until she was inside her building before allowing the taxi to depart. You couldn’t be too careful these days.

The murder had certainly unnerved Celia. It was crazy to think she’d had any part in it. And why would she? Jack had seen no looks of recognition between the victim and his daughter, though they’d been seated right across from each other. Of course, the fact that the sight of the corpse left Celia visibly upset didn’t mean that she was innocent.

Where would she get hold of a key to the staff door of Molino’s, anyway? Unless… No, the waitress she’d spoken to – that’d been about the service, nothing else.

What madness was he thinking?

To distract himself, he concentrated on what he’d say when he called Detective Lieutenant Anne Smelding and asked her for a date.